


Reliquary

by The_Exile



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Community: ladiesbingo, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15957575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Poppi has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and Adenine is always happy to tutor her.





	Reliquary

**Author's Note:**

> for ladies_bingo card square 'librarians/archivists'

Poppi was just as capable of simply downloading all the information in the databanks to her own memory drives as Adenine herself was. However, the ancient, elite Archive model Blade refused to allow her any kind of reliance on this learning method. 

"I want to see you process and truly understand the material for yourself," she explained, holding out a book that floated in mid-air just above her outstretched palm, its pages lazily rustling back and forth in a non-existent wind. Itself, it wasn't a true book, just like the rest of the tomes that floated around her, were symbolically chained to her, or seemed to appear from out of nowhere at a snap of her fingertips wherever she happened to be. Adenine did also collect real books - in fact, it was closer to say that she enshrined them - but the ones she actually taught Poppi from were physical impressions of the vast annals of data on every conceivable topic collected in her memory. Some of the larger book shapes, probably all the chained-up ones, might be part of her hardware. However, Poppi knew that her entire memory was distributed in a constantly roaming and shifting pattern over a large number of devices, a lot of them less obvious, as a security measure. Who knew what the real Adenine looked like, or even if there was such a concept that had any meaning to the Archivist? 

Occasionally, when Poppi had performed particularly well, Adenine rewarded her with the most treasured gift of a real book from her reliquary. The tasks she had to perform to win such a favour often varied, including not only an understanding of the subject matter but also improved motor coordination, an issue Poppi sometimes had trouble with and that Adenine worried would lead to one of her books being damaged. She also often encouraged the young android to go out into the world more, to find out first hand whether the information in her records was still true, and especially to ask a variety of different people their opinions or what they had learned in their own studies. 

"I'm supposed to be just a data memory recording tool," said Adenine, "But that was a long time ago, when there were better facilities, and more of us. All that's gone, so I have to do it myself, be my own eyes and ears. And I won't last forever, so I'll need to train other Blades with the necessary memory storage capacity. You artificial Blades are ideal."

 

"Is that also because we don't lose our memories?" Poppi looked a little worried at the prospect. Concerned for Adenine, she realised, at the thought of the woman who valued learning above all else simply forgetting everything she knew one day. 

"Don't worry. I have plenty of back-up devices. And, yes, we do keep diaries as an extra precaution. All Blades should do that, you know, even artificial ones. Just in case you get scrapped and can't be rebuilt. Poppi 2 will need your notes."

Adenine's casual discussion of her permanent death made the android lower her eyes, crestfallen. She's not programmed to be kind and friendly like you are, Poppi reminded herself. 

"Um... Adenine... if there were lots of archivist Blades like you... does that mean a lot of Blades weren't weapons?"

Adenine's laugh had a hard edge to it, "Oh, child, information is the most dangerous weapon of all."


End file.
